Film review: Miranda (1948)

 

If you enjoyed the pairing of David Tomlinson and the gloriously husky-voiced Glynis Johns as the Banks parents in Mary Poppins, well, have I got the film for you!  It's a surprisingly amusing (and surprisingly racy) little mermaid number, with Johns in all her glamorous youth as the titular semi-piscine temptress and a plethora of familiar faces filling out the cast, from Googie Withers to Margaret Rutherford, and I swear I saw Eric Sykes in a tiny role as the man delivering fish for Miranda to eat.  The plot is fairly simple: a doctor who always drags his wife off on his fishing holidays is persuaded by said wife (Googie Withers's Clare - coolly sensible when all about her are getting carried away) to holiday solo this year.  So, off he goes for a week in Cornwall.  Well, on his first day, he is dragged by the absurdly seductive Miranda down to her underwater cave, 

where she intends to keep him, having done so (she assures him) with many men before.  Somehow she has managed to acquire Vogue magazines down there, and has developed a burning desire to see the big city, so our purported hero (Griffith Jones playing Paul) persuades her to let him out if he will take her to London.  Initially reluctant, he realizes it's his only way out, and while he is clearly smitten with Miranda (as are all men who encounter her), he doesn't share her taste for raw fish.  As Miranda is naked (with the usual voluminous hair covering up her breasts (in an interview I saw the much older Johns refer to her extensions as her "boozie-bits"), Paul has to order some (extra long) dresses to be sent down to Cornwall before Miranda can be transported home.  He writes ahead to Clare to warn her that he's bringing a patient who can't walk back with him to stay at their flat, so she and the two servants (Tomlinson's Charles and Yvonne Owen's Betty) get a room ready (with its own bathroom 

- clearly doctoring has done Paul well).  Clare somehow expects an elderly patient, as does Charles, who lets Clare know that he doesn't intend to push Miranda around in a bath chair. (Of course, he quickly changes his tune when she arrives.)  To her credit, though, Clare, with her admirable sang-froid, shows little jealousy when she sees the startlingly attractive young patient, although she does insist that she have a nurse.  Paul immediately thinks of an appropriate one, a nurse whom he has previously parted ways with because of her "eccentricity" - Margaret Rutherford, of course.  She is the only one other than Paul who is let into the secret of Miranda's true nature, and is instantly delighted "She's a mermaid!  I always knew they existed!" 

The rest of the film doesn't really progress as you might expect (especially if you'd seen Splash).  Miranda's role is mainly to seduce (in a way that is somehow charming and innocent, but at the same time a little bit predatory, but brings surprisingly little feminine hatred her way), three men - Paul, Charles, and John McCallum's Nigel, who is the artist fiancé of Isobel, Paul and Clare's upstairs neighbor and hat-shop-proprietor.  The men all make varying degrees of fools of themselves, but when they discover how she has behaved to the other two, are content to return to their former partners, who in turn are content to have them back.  Not enough is made of the fish-out-of-water aspects of the scenario, apart from Miranda gorging herself at a mussel stand (to the horror of her nurse and delight of the other clientele), and a visit to the zoo where she manages to catch a fish intended for a seal in her mouth and gulp it down with relish.  She also turns out to be a real fan of the opera, because she has the pipes to match, something that gets her thrown out.  However, eventually Clare works out what she is and Miranda overhears Clare arguing with Paul about revealing her existence, and, fearful that she'll end up pickled like her aunt, she makes a break for it (pausing only to finish snacking on the fish in the flat's fish bowl).  She is last seen cavorting in Majorca (she'd already made her plans to head there in May clear) with a mer-baby, it being strongly hinted that Paul is the father (the other two being ruled out as possibilities because Clare is able to establish that they had never seen her "legs").  

The film was a big enough hit that there was a (less well-received) sequel.
An admittedly slight film, but, much like Miranda herself, effortlessly charming, largely because of the quality of the performers, particularly the three leading women.  If you just know Johns from Mary Poppins (where she shows startling disregard for her children's safety but admirable zealotry for the suffragette cause), you might be surprised at what a glamorous and slightly alien creature she can portray.  If she didn't perform Oscar Wilde at some point, the world was cheated: her delivery is perfect for his lines.